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1. UNWALKABLE CITIES HOW TO
2. UNWALKABLE CITIES DRIVERS

But the failure of the fuel tax to cover the costs of the transportation system suggests a more general failure: the current system does not meet the needs of a modern America in which rich and poor alike increasingly live in the suburbs.įor fifty years, the idea that a user fee of some sort should lie at the heart of the funding for any transportation project reigned supreme.

In the short term, Congress will likely continue to rely on fill-up money from the general treasury. But Congress has yet to find a long-term way to replenish the Fund. In 2009, facing the same difficulties, the government repeated the action-twice. Having already obligated billions to states ready to build new roads and transit systems, Congress in 2008 had no choice but to dip into the general treasury and authorize an $8 billion infusion of income tax revenues to fill the Fund’s emptied coffers. The current decline in car use spells disaster for the Fund. At last count, the network was more than 45,000 miles long. The system was self-reinforcing: the more people in cars, the more concrete could be laid.

UNWALKABLE CITIES DRIVERS

The program was easy to understand: drivers paid taxes on their gasoline consumption, Washington replenished the Highway Trust Fund, and revenues were redistributed to the states to construct new roads. transportation policy prioritized the completion of the Interstate Highway System, whose multi-lane freeways now span out across the country like a spider’s web.

UNWALKABLE CITIES HOW TO

The first quandary is how to fund desperately needed road improvements while simultaneously pushing for changes that will make mass transit more feasible in suburban areas.įor decades, U.S. Hybrids and small cars are replacing gas-guzzlers eventually, electric vehicles that use no taxable fuel at all may become the norm.Īlthough progressive transportation activists hail this decline, they must face the challenge of advocating policies that do not adversely affect the poor, who now live mainly outside of inner cities and rely on cars for access to jobs, food, schools, and services. Though fuel prices have declined, the reduction in gas consumption is a long-term trend. When gas hit four dollars a gallon in 2008, however, something exceptional happened: for the first time in history, the number of miles driven in passenger vehicles dropped. The trend seemed inevitable: America would be a nation of drivers residing in unwalkable, monofunctional neighborhoods far from city centers. The infusion of money into highways through gasoline taxes and the suburban exodus of the middle class and their adoption of the automobile as the primary mode of transportation profoundly altered the nation’s landscape over the past fifty years. Cars, Highways, and the Poor Yonah Freemark ▪ Winter 2010